Firehand Ember

This is one of those pages you hope never to have to write.

Firehand, the creator of image viewing products such as Firehand Ember and Firehand Lightning is no more.

Firehand ceased to exist shortly after the death of its founder and primary engineer, and my good friend, Matthew Warren Smith. Matthew worked for me for a time when our paths crossed at Microsoft, and I can honestly say that he was one of the best software engineers I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with.

The firehand.com domain lapsed in 2007, and while I tried to purchase it on his behalf I was outbid at auction. It now appears to be unused, but unavailable.

To the best of my knowledge, Firehand Ember and Lightning will no longer be updated. I’ve been asked if perhaps the estate would consider open sourcing it, or perhaps handing it off to others to maintain. I believe that the source code, and the knowledge of how to use, build and maintain it, is also no longer available.

I spent some time searching for a suitable replacement, and while it’s not everything that Ember was, I’ve settled on FastStone Image Viewer.

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